


And through a crack the truth seeps through like acid

by kittu9



Category: Naruto
Genre: Dark, F/M, Gen, Gender Issues, Menstruation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-20
Updated: 2011-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/kittu9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a kind of clarity that reminds you why you’re completely fucked. Sakura's  team is clueless. It would just figure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And through a crack the truth seeps through like acid

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in Spring 2005. Dark themes abound, but there are no explicit descriptions of lady times (if you were worried). It’s really more an exploration of what the hell is wrong with Team 7. (Answer: so much.)

There are days when she resents, with great passion, that she is the only girl on Team Seven. She is tired of being weak, of knowing the textbook answers, of fighting with Naruto, of being passed over by Kakashi again and again—and most terrifyingly of all, she is sometimes sick to death of loving Sasuke. It's become an addiction, a habit, and she's not certain that the decision to love him was even her own. She suspects that it wasn't and is drawn back again to him anyway.

There are days too—a set pattern of sadistic days, a certain week full of self-hatred—when she is a hindrance to the team (more of a hindrance than usual, she thinks, bitterly. She is perhaps her harshest critic, because she is the only one in Konoha who expects anything to come of herself). On these days she does what she can—often better than her teammates, better than other weeks out of the month, out of sheer pig-headed spite—with weeping and grinding of teeth, mentally cursing her fucking ovaries and her fucking uterus and her fucking endometrium. (She has no female friends, sometimes it seems she has no friends at all; she bears her female mysteries in secret and wishes that she could turn her body off. In fact, there are ways to do this and she knows them and it is really only a matter of time.)

She is fiercer on these days. That darkness settles in about her and invades her deeply, to her very bones; when he sees this, Kakashi almost notices his pretty student. But old habits die hard and memories die harder, and he keeps his eye fixed more closely on the boys.

When she is like this she frightens Naruto and he doesn't understand what it is about her that makes her a demon. She's not like him, she's not she's not she's NOT—she's not like him at all, she is normal, the most normal girl he can think of (he doesn't know if he really loves her and he wonders if that's all right).

Sasuke sees that she is angry and in pain (though he cannot guess why, and ranks her pain as less important than his own) and thinks that maybe she is not quite as stupid as he thought. But he is really too enamored with his own self-destruction to see what is going on around him.

She'll be his downfall, he thinks distractedly, and does not realize how right he is.

As for her—she doesn't care anymore and is hell-bent on being right. As much as no one believes that she will become a real ninja, Sakura is so full with her inner demonic self (but only this week; it's sad, really) that in comparison, her teammates are only husks. (Kakashi is like a scarecrow, bitter and stuck relieving that moment when his precious people became past tense and she wants to scream at him to drop his stupid book and to look at Naruto, Sasuke, _her_ , and realize that he needs to shift his focus to sometime now.)

(Naruto is just as bad but different, his focus so wild and impossible that she knows he must be smart, deep down, if he could only concentrate—but she is frustrated with his ability, all that talent and his apparent cluelessness. He's half animal, she thinks, like a fox caught in a trap.)

(And as for Sasuke---)

(Sasuke is killing her slowly and at the same time unwittingly fanning that flame within her.)

She hates herself these days, so much that the anger is a relief; at least the thing eating her is a part of her body, not like her traitorous heart. Sasuke is a sick sort of love that she never wants to give up, even if it kills them both. She has no doubt that someday it will.

And because it is this week—this week when she sees red and tastes metal and bile in her mouth and wants to rip out her own organs, to mutilate and work a sort of evil revenge against her perfidious body—she is glad to know that, and in fact relishes it.

It is, she thinks through the haze, merely a matter of time.


End file.
